


What Went Wrong in Westeros (and Why): A dramaturgical analysis/fan-fiction rewrite of the last four episodes of Game of Thrones, with footnotes

by Bret Fetzer (fetz0rama)



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-18 21:00:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20645600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fetz0rama/pseuds/Bret%20Fetzer
Summary: Dissatisfied with the final season of GAME OF THRONES?  Well, so was I, so I rewrote portions of the last four episodes so they make sense and give some of the characters (particularly the female characters) a stronger, more satisfying end.  Also, I have some notions about why the story lost its way.





	What Went Wrong in Westeros (and Why): A dramaturgical analysis/fan-fiction rewrite of the last four episodes of Game of Thrones, with footnotes

_In the last season of _Game of Thrones_, the writers were working from George RR Martin’s outline of what he intends to write in his last books. Though they diverged from that outline (among other things, in the books, the Night King—or Night’s King, as Martin prefers—is a legend who may not still exist), they attempted to follow Martin’s overall arc…but did not, to my mind, do it well. The goal of this rewrite is not to toss George RR Martin’s plot aside, but to make better sense of it—up until his plot itself doesn’t make sense (at least, in my judgment). Also, towards the end, some female characters stagnated while some males got way too much screen time, and I’ve tweaked that. I can justify all but two choices I’ve made through reference to earlier events. I’ve footnoted a few things, but not everything, because it would be insanely annoying. If you didn’t watch the full eight seasons of _Game of Thrones_, this rewrite is going to be pretty impossible to follow. I tried to write a concise summary of the previous seasons, but within seconds I was defeated by the sheer proliferation of events and characters. This rewrite features 18 speaking parts and refers to a dozen more characters. I’ll remind you of who some smaller characters are, but if you don’t know the difference between Bronn and Brienne, I can’t help you. I hope you enjoy this ridiculous but sincere expression of appreciation/dissatisfaction._

The tv series of _Game of Thrones_—and I assume the books; I haven’t read them, I’ll only be dealing with the tv show here—_Game of Thrones_ was remarkable not because it was blazingly original (it has its novelties, but most of its elements—knights, dragons, a vaguely medieval socio-cultural setting—are pretty much staples of the heroic fantasy genre), it was remarkable because it takes a typical heroic fantasy setting and infuses it with realistic human behavior.

To get a sense of the lack of basic human realism in heroic fantasy, consider that _Lord of the Rings_, the keystone of the genre, has only three named female characters [1], who, combined, take up maybe ten, twelve pages out of a thousand. (While the treatment of the female characters in _Game of Thrones_ has led to completely valid debate and controversy, I give the show credit for being aware that multiple women exist.) Despite the seemingly unavoidable homoeroticism this abundance of men in _Lord of the Rings_ would suggest, no one has sex or is in any way motivated by sex. There is faultless good and undiluted evil, and you know someone is evil by the number of harsh or sibilant consonants in their name. While this does not make _Lord of the Rings_ bad, it does make its characters completely unlike human beings as they live and interact in the real world. 

In _Game of Thrones_, there is no absolute good and evil—even the Night King, whose sole purpose is the annihilation of humanity, was created by eldritch sprites to defend nature against humanity’s destructive acts. The result of all this moral ambiguity is a dense, complex story with interweaving threads, set in a world rich with magic and spectacle, but grounded in behavior that is, moment to moment, convincing as the actions of fallible human beings, each capable of good or evil as they struggle towards some kind of personal fulfillment... 

...At least, up until the last couple of seasons, when a lot of that began to fall apart. This performance is going to focus on the last four episodes of the last season, because that’s where things really took a nosedive—when some characters stagnated, while others began doing stupid things to further the plot, even though the writers could have, with a bit of thinking things through, come up with perfectly sound reasons for what they needed to have happen.

We can’t get into everything, because you don’t want to be here for another four to six hours. But I’m going to get into the stuff that is really poorly thought-through: For example, there’s this moment in _Episode 4: The Last of the Starks_, in which Daenerys’s army is sailing to King’s Landing and she and her two remaining dragons are flying above them, not a care in the world, when they are caught by surprise by an armada of ships armed with remarkably fast-loading giant crossbows. One of the dragons, Rhaegal, already injured in the Long Night, is struck by several giant bolts and killed. 

Now, Daenerys knows that her enemy, Queen Cersei, has the support of the Iron Fleet, and she knows these giant crossbows—called scorpions, which I was surprised to learn is a real name, the Romans called them that—these crossbows exist because Drogon has been wounded by one before. [2]

So not anticipating such a possible attack makes Daenerys and her advisors very stupid. David Bennioff and D.B. Weiss, the creators of the show—henceforth referred to as D&D—D&D actually justified this in an interview by saying that Daenerys “kind of” forgot about the Iron Fleet. Whenever you have to accept that an event happened because a character forgot about something that’s incredibly stupid of them to forget, you’re dealing with some sloppy writing.

But: Imagine a brief scene in which Lord Varys assures Daenerys that the Iron Fleet is in Essos, seeking more allies for the Queen. How does he know? His little birds, of course. Then imagine a brief scene in which Qyburn, the Hand of the Queen and Cersei’s resident mad scientist, talks with those little birds—who we already know have started working for him [3]—about the disinformation they’ve been spreading about the Iron Fleet. And there we are: Daenerys is no longer an idiot; Varys makes a terrible mistake not because he’s stupid, but because he’s understandably overconfident in his powers, which have never failed him before—overconfidence leading to disaster is a recurring theme of the show—and Cersei’s side is shown to more cunning and more dangerous than we thought, which is important because we need to believe that this impending battle will be a battle of equals.

This is what really goes wrong with these last four episodes: Not that the plot developments that were dictated by George RR Martin don’t make sense (though a few certainly don’t), but that the writers flounder through them, ignoring story elements already planted in previous seasons that would both make more sense and heighten the drama. And the writers consistently stunt the characters—particularly the female characters—in the process.

Let’s begin with **Episode 3: The Long Night**. 

We begin at Winterfell. 

So…you know that your enemy has the power to raise the dead and instantly turn them into his own soldiers. You know that he already has thousands upon thousands of these undead wights, who experience neither pain nor fear, but will tirelessly, relentlessly, throw themselves at you over and over and over until you die and he makes you one of them. And your entire goal is simply to fend off these undead soldiers until their leader decides to reveal himself—I’m not really sure why he would do this, since he knows he can just wait in hiding until his zombie hordes have killed everyone, but maybe he gets impatient—anyhow, all you’re trying to do is stay alive until your enemy exposes himself and gives you the chance to kill him.

Maybe you don’t start by throwing your fiercest fighters, who are already completely out of their element and, for some reason, continue to dress as if they were in an equatorial desert, maybe you don’t use these irreplaceable warriors as cannon fodder. Maybe, instead, you start with those burning trenches and jagged obstructions so you don’t risk adding to your enemy’s army for at least a little while. (We’re going to lose that eerily beautiful sequence of the flaming swords going out one by one in the darkness, but I think it’s worth it not to insult everyone’s intelligence.)

And maybe you use your one serious advantage, dragonfire, from the start. There was all this talk about making sure the dragons stayed ready to defend Bran in the godswood, who is apparently the Night King’s true target—we’re just going to go with that—but at this point Jon and Daenerys are still hoping that dragonfire will kill the Night King, which means they’re planning to blast the godswood—which would incinerate Bran and everything else. So instead of that hare-brained idea, Jon and Dany will spray the hordes of wights again and again—because one of the things that does kill the undead is fire—and if they keep that up long enough, that will force the Night King to come out with his ice dragon because that’s his best weapon against their dragons.

Meanwhile, the Dothraki and the Unsullied and the Northmen all line up on the walls and at the doors and windows—all the most defensible bottlenecks that the ice zombies will have to get through to kill everyone. 

And the people who can’t fight will go down into the crypts—but first there will be a conversation like this:

A: But wait—if the Night King raises the dead, they’ll be surrounded by wights of their ancestors.

B: Those bodies are old and withered and encased in stone. They can’t get out. Probably.

So much of this season would be tolerable if we just saw the characters make the decision. Bad decisions are essentially human—and this show is all about people make bad decisions and then paying for them, horribly. It’s why we love it.

Meanwhile, Bran has warged into a flock of ravens, so when the Night King’s icy fog rolls in, that flock acts as scouts, and when they find the ice dragon in the murk, they fly in circles to give Jon and Dany targets to blast with dragonfire, so that it’s not just the Night King coming at them by surprise over and over.

The dragons have lit the first trench, so that the undead are momentarily stymied. When they start throwing themselves on the flames so that other undead can tromp over them, the dragons are busy doing aerial dogfights, so Melisandre, the Red Witch who channels the Lord of Light, runs out and dramatically lights the second trench at the last minute.

But the wights eventually get in, and there’s heroic fighting and carnage everywhere. And wights and White Walkers start converging on the godswood, where the Ironborn fight them off. The characters we care most about get through narrow scrapes and the characters we like but tend to forget about get killed. Lyanna Mormont kills an undead giant and dies in process. 

Up in the air, the dragon Rhaegal is injured and crashes, which Jon survives out of sheer plot necessity. The ravens get too close to the Night King and he snatches one out of the air—but as he does so, the milky white goes out of its eyes and it’s just a very freaked-out raven. While this distracts the Night King, Bran tries to warg into the ice dragon. He doesn’t succeed—the Night King’s magic animates it and the Night King is clearly warg-resistant—but the struggle makes the ice dragon buck and writhe and the Night King falls to the ground. 

Daenerys and Drogon zoom in and blast the Night King with dragonfire—which has no effect. (But the Night King doesn’t smirk, because he’s an elemental force forged by eldritch magic to annihilate the human race; he is not a drunken, date-rapey dudebro.)

The Night King raises the dead and heads to the godswood. Fighting and carnage increases.

Cut to the crypts, where the weak and defenseless are huddled. Suddenly there’s a light tapping sound. As everyone looks to and fro, the tapping slowly grows to a banging and then to a thudding—because it’s true: These corpses are ancient and withered and encased in stone and they can’t just burst out. (And we need this kind of slow-building tension to contrast with the grueling combat outside—otherwise we lurch from chaos to chaos and it all becomes narrative mud.) Someone, perhaps Tyrion, goes up to a crypt wall and puts his hand up against it—and a bit of ancient mortar cracks and flies into his face.

Cut elsewhere to more fighting, more carnage.

In the godswood, all of the Ironborn have been slaughtered—including Theon, because Theon has already been redeemed and forgiven twiceover, we don’t need another moment for Theon. He’s dead. Bran sits there, aloof and impassive as ever, surrounded by an equally impassive ring of White Walkers and wights, who are waiting for the Night King.

In the crypts, a wall has cracked open and a single headless wight, relatively undecayed, climbs out as everyone backs away. It reaches back into the tomb and draws out its head, which it places on its neck: It’s zombie Ned Stark. [4] He advances on the terrified group. The young girl—the one who told Ser Davos she wanted to fight when he was giving her soup—she attacks the Ned wight. He’s about to kill her when Sansa comes behind him with her dragonglass dagger and sticks him with the pointy end. His body collapses and his head falls off, tumbling to the side.

Arya is running through Winterfell, having been nudged by Melisandre, when she runs smack into the undead Lyanna Mormont, with shimmering blue eyes and pallid skin. 

Arya and Lyanna face off and have a duel both fierce and elegant. But at a critical moment, Arya trips! Lyanna pounces! Arya blocks Lyanna’s blow, but Lyanna has the strength of the undead now and she forces her sword down—

Cut to the crypts. Sansa reaches out to touch her father’s fallen head—and it bites at her. The girl who wanted to fight smashes it. Sansa is both relieved and stricken.

The wights and the ice dragon are running amok through Winterfell while Dothraki, Unsullied, Northmen, and all the characters we actually care about fend them off. 

In the godswood, the ring of White Walkers and wights part, letting the Night King step through. As the Night King approaches Bran and draws his badass sword, Lyanna Mormont, her armor spattered with blood, walks among the wights and White Walkers. None of them pay any attention to her—why should they? She’s one of them. None of them notices that she’s holding a particular dagger of Valyrian steel in her hand. 

But as the Night King lifts his blade to cut Bran down, Lyanna runs and leaps, the dagger held high. The Night King whirls and catches her by the throat and the upraised wrist—he stares at her, confused that one of his wights has attacked him—and she drops the dagger to her other hand and thrusts it into the Night King, who shatters into shards of ice. Lyanna falls amid these shards and pulls off her face, revealing that it is actually Arya, finally using her face-stealing skills for the first time in far, far too long, using this seemingly forgotten skill to get past the icy entourage and get close to the Night King.

All the wights collapse, but the White Walkers—who are not corpses raised from the dead, but living humans who were transmogrified as babies by the Night King’s elemental magic [5]—their White Walkerness drains out of them, their eyes turn from crystalline blue to brown or green or gray. But they’ve never known anything else, so they don’t think of themselves as human, and they flee. Most get cut down by Unsullied or Dothraki or Northmen, but a few escape into the approaching dawn. [6]

And Melisandre walks out of Winterfell, takes off her necklace, and collapses into the snow.

End of Episode 3.

Next: **Episode 4: The Last of the Starks**

Bodies, so many bodies, yet so few people we care about, are being burned—as Lyanna Mormont’s pyre is set alight, Bran turns to Arya:

BRAN: Don’t you want them to know you slew the Night King?

ARYA: House Mormont is dead. I gave her back her face, I can give her that glory too. I don’t want it. [7]

The bodies are burnt, tears are shed, and everyone gathers in the great hall to eat and drink and marvel that they are still alive. 

Amid this celebration—quaffing and carousing and people slipping away for some one-on-one life-affirmation—Daenerys sits alone. No one comes to sit with her, no one shares a laugh or hugs her fiercely, as they do for Jon Snow and everyone else. The show paints her response to this as jealousy, as fear that Jon, who has told her he’s the true heir to the Iron Throne, will push her aside and everyone will cheer. But Daenerys is an outsider who is recognizing that, even after risking life, limb, and dragons to save every single person in that banquet hall, these Northerners are deeply xenophobic and will never accept her. That’s not paranoia, it’s reality, and for Daenerys to ignore it would be foolish. Giving Gendry the Baratheon ancestral home only gains her a smidge of grudging respect. She will never be loved by the North as she has been loved by the Unsullied and the Dothraki and former slaves of Essos. 

Even the Hound, perhaps the most off-putting person in all of Westeros, is approached by a young woman with come-hither eyes—but he sends her away with a snarl. Sansa sits across from him. Their eyes meet.

HOUND: Used to be you couldn’t look at me.

SANSA: I’ve seen much worse than you since then.

HOUND: You’ve changed, little bird. None of it would have happened if you’d left King’s Landing with me. No Littlefinger. No Ramsey. None of it.

SANSA: Who would you be, Sandor Clegane, if your brother hadn’t held your face in a fire when you were a child?

HOUND: I don’t know.

SANSA: Do you wonder?

HOUND: No point to it.

SANSA: We all say we needed the horrors and cruelties that happened to us, else we’d stay children all our lives. But I wonder: If we kept some childishness alive, maybe we’d be less horrible and cruel to the children who come after us.

HOUND: I knew a man like that. He was kind. [8]

SANSA: You’re about to tell me he died, in some horrible, cruel way.

HOUND: Yeah. 

SANSA: But you remember his kindness.

HOUND: Yeah.

SANSA: Do you wish he was still alive?

HOUND: Yeah.

Sansa touches the Hound’s hand.

SANSA: I remember that you were kind to me.

The Hound doesn’t know how to respond to that. Sansa rises and leaves.

As the revels go on, a drunken Tormund finds Brienne in a passageway and, in his drunken Tormund way, woos her. Brienne, who has survived a brutal night in which she expected to die, looks this way and that; no one is there. She grabs Tormund and drags him to her room. But it doesn’t work. Brienne and Tormund don’t think or feel or move in compatible ways; nothing about them connects and Brienne finds him unbearable. After awkward floundering, she stops it, says she’s sorry, and she pushes him out of her room.

Tormund is crestfallen and heartbroken, but the wildlings are the Free Folk; he would never demand what another won’t freely give. He clumsily pulls on clothing as he stumbles down the hall, calling for more drink as soon as he sees someone carrying a bottle.

But later, Jaime comes to Brienne’s room, and they do connect—mentally, emotionally, and physically.

Meanwhile, Dany tells Jon not to tell anyone that he’s a Targaryan; he does so anyway, and they tell two friends, and they tell two friends… 

The next day, Daenarys meets with her counselors. Varys assures her the Iron Fleet is in Essos, but we learn that Qyburn has been feeding Varys false information.

So Daenerys, her waffling lover, her ill-informed advisors, her army, and her dragons sail south—everyone’s a bit cheerful and carefree—and, shortly before reaching Dragonstone, they are somehow ambushed by a huge fleet of ships, the dragon Rhaegal is killed, and their own ships are destroyed. Everyone we care about makes it to shore—except Missandei, Daenerys’ translator and closest friend, and Grey Worm’s beloved. They fear she is drowned or, worse, captured by the Iron Fleet.

Back in Winterfell, Brienne wakes up in bed alone. She goes out and finds Jaime preparing his horse. Their eyes meet. He babbles about the terrible things he’s done, what a terrible person he is, but Brienne already sees what's going on.

BRIENNE: I’ll go with you.

JAIME: You’re pledged to Sansa Stark.

BRIENNE: Sansa has a castle full of protectors. You only have me.

Jaime sinks to the ground and weeps.

Brienne goes back inside to get her armor. On her way, she kicks Podrick awake—he’s in bed with the girl he picked up at the feast.

BRIENNE: Jaime Lannister is outside. If you let him leave without me, I’ll chop off something you hold very dear.

Podrick leaps up and runs outside half-dressed. But he needn’t have hurried; Jaime still sits on the snowy ground, still weeping.

Brienne returns in full armor, helps Jaime up and onto his horse. She turns to Podrick.

BRIENNE: I charge you with protecting Lady Stark’s life. Do not disappoint me.

Podrick nods and watches as Jaime and Brienne set off for King’s Landing.

There’s a quick scene in King’s Landing in which it’s shown that Cersei has invited the common folk within the castle walls to keep Dany from destroying the city. Cersei has also led Euron Greyjoy to believe that he’s the one who’s gotten her pregnant—and they have Missandei prisoner. 

Back in Dragonstone, Daenerys is understandably furious about the lousy intelligence she’s gotten from her counselors. Grey Worm says they should storm the city. Varys says that innocents will be slaughtered. Tyrion says they should meet with Cersei and demand surrender.

DAENERYS: Cersei has just killed one of my dragons. Cersei has just destroyed most of my fleet. Cersei has an army of sellswords and sits in the most impregnable fortress in Westeros. Why do you think she will surrender?

TYRION: If you don’t try to negotiate surrender, then you are no better than she is. You must show the people that you tried to make peace.

Daenerys agrees. But before Tyrion can send word to Cersei that he wants to parley, there’s a message from the Red Keep. It’s a box.

Daenerys unties the ribbon. When she lifts the lid, the four sides of the box fall open, revealing Missandei’s severed head. [9]

For a moment, no one moves. Then Daenerys weeps. Grey Worm stands, stoic, but suffering. Everyone else stands still, giving Daenerys this moment to grieve.

Finally, Tyrion offers Daenerys a handkerchief. She wipes her eyes. She stands.

DAENERYS: We attack the city in the morning.

TYRION: Your grace.

She looks at him, unreadable.

TYRION: If they ring the bells…

She looks at him, unreadable.

TYRION: …it means the city surrenders. 

She looks at him, unreadable.

TYRION: Will you honor that?

DAENERYS: Your sister will die.

TYRION: And deserve it, richly. But the people of King’s Landing—the seamstresses and blacksmiths and whores and beggars, the mothers and children—they don’t deserve it. 

Daenerys nods.

TYRION: Thank you.

DAENERYS: Is there anything else I should know about this city before tomorrow?

TYRION: No. 

Varys gives Tyrion a sideways glance, clearly considering something, but:

VARYS: I can’t think of anything either.

Cut to: Up in Winterfell, Sansa is meeting with the other lords of the North.

SANSA: Lord Glover, you still have stores of grain; if you can share your grain with the people of the fallen Houses Umber and Mormant—

Podrick stumbles in.

SANSA: What is it?

POD: Ser Brienne told me to be your personal guard, Lady Stark.

SANSA: Where is Ser Brienne?

POD: Uh…she’s gone south. 

SANSA: With Arya?

POD: Uh…no, with Ser Jaime.

SANSA: Gone south with Jaime Lannister? Why?

POD: She didn’t want to—

SANSA: No—why has Jaime Lannister—

Wheels spin in Sansa’s head. She rises. 

SANSA: Lords of the North: We’ve had a spy among us. The Lannisters will not surprise us; we will surprise them. Prepare your men.

End of Episode 4. 

**Season 8, Episode 5: The Bells**

Varys meets Jon Snow on the beach at Dragonstone, lets him know that he, Varys, knows that he, Jon, is a secret Targaryan, and tries to persuade Jon that it’s because he doesn’t want to rule that he should rule. Jon, in a rare moment of clarity, replies:

JON: I was made Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. It didn’t end well. I was named King in the North. The North thinks I betrayed them. Maybe I don’t want to be king because I already know I’d be shit at it.

And he walks away. But Tyrion has seen this conversation and knows what Varys is up to, because Varys has already been telling him that Daenerys might burn the entire city and maybe she’s not as ideal a queen as they’d hoped. 

Tyrion goes to Daenerys and tells her that someone has betrayed her. She says it’s Jon Snow. Tyrion says no, it’s Varys…but Dany says yes, Jon has betrayed her by telling others about his heritage, even though she’d told him not to, and this has led to all of these other betrayals. But instead of Daenerys oozing with neurosis and paranoia as she lays it all out, she does so methodically; a bit bitter and unhappy about it, yes, but clearly and calmly. 

Because she’s right: Her lover and her advisors have talked behind her back and done things she’s expressly told them not to do. It isn’t paranoia if it’s real.

So Varys, who really has crossed a line, burns.

Meanwhile, the Hound and Arya talk their way through army lines and get into the city.

Jon visits Daenerys and they have a really awkward failed kiss, and Dany sadly sees that the spark has gone out of their romance. He also asks her to think of the innocent people of King’s Landing.

DAENERYS: I drove the slave masters from Mereen with my dragons. With fire. And I left Tyrion, my trusted advisor, to rule the city, with justice and mercy. And what happened? What happened to the city of Mereen, and the city of Astapor, and the city of Yunkai, while I went to find the Dothraki?

JON: I don’t know.

DAENERYS: The slavers returned. And recaptured Astapor, and recaptured Yunkai, and laid siege to Mereen. And only when I returned with my dragons and burned the slavers, burned their ships, burned their armies—only then did justice and mercy return. You and Tyrion and Varys speak of mercy, but none of you understand what it takes to secure it. Justice is fragile. Mercy is delicate. Too delicate for the world we live in. So that world needs to be changed. With fire.

And again, based on her experience, Daenerys is right: Her entire life has taught her that without power to back it up, good intentions go nowhere. Every time she’s been utterly brutal, usually by setting people on fire [10] but occasionally by crucifying them [11] or sealing them up in vaults [12], things have gone her way. And when she hasn’t, everything has fallen apart. And Daenerys, unlike certain other characters we could mention, learns from her mistakes.

Jon nods like he gets it, but Jon, who is earnest and soulful and good with a sword, is Jon Snow, and he knows nothing.

Meanwhile, Brienne and Jaime Lannister encounter a few Northern soldiers. Brienne tries to talk their way through, like the Hound and Arya did, but these soldiers are either smarter or dumber than the others and either way, they’re not buying it. Jaime, still a bit out of his mind, sets off on his horse when he has the chance. One of the soldiers fires an arrow that goes through a meaty part of Jaime’s torso; not where it would obviously rupture Jaime’s kidneys or spleen, but a nasty flesh wound. Jaime pulls the arrow all the way through and throws it aside. The soldiers try to stop Brienne, so she has to fight and kill them all, but by the time she’s done, Jaime has vanished. Brienne sets off in the same direction, hoping to catch up with him.

It’s time. Armies line up outside of the city. Ships are spread out in the harbor. Everyone’s waiting. 

Euron Greyjoy squints up at the sky as Daenerys and Drogon come soaring down with the sun behind her. And Euron takes the full brunt of Drogon’s first blast of fire and he is toast, and we will never have to be annoyed by him again.

Drogon burns the Iron Fleet, burns the scorpions on the walls of the city, burns down the gates, burns the Golden Company. The Dothraki and the Unsullied and the Northmen stream into King’s Landing.

And at this point, because she has clear goals and she’s not messing around, Daenerys heads straight for the Red Keep, where Cersei is staring out over the city from a balcony, in classic Cersei Lannister form. The Mountain and Qyburn stand behind her.

QYBURN: Your grace, we must launch our last defense.

CERSEI: Not yet.

The dragon comes closer.

QYBURN: Your grace—

CERSEI: Not yet.

The dragon comes closer.

QYBURN: Your—

CERSEI: Now.

Qyburn gives the signal and two catapults launch two huge barrels at Daenerys and Drogon. Instinctively, Drogon blasts them with his fiery breath—and they explode, showering blazing green wildfire, like medieval napalm, all over Drogon and Daenerys. 

Drogon screams as the wildfire clings to him. He spirals down to the ground, Daenerys hanging on for dear life.

Cersei watches with glee.

When Drogon lands hard, Daenerys leap off of him before he starts rolling around to put out the wildfire, crashing into buildings as he does.

Daenerys is bruised but unburnt (because she is the Unburnt). She wipes the wildfire from her skin and burning clothes and looks at it blazing green on her hands.

Windows and doors open. People stick their heads out to see what’s going on. They see the invading queen standing in the street. A small mob emerges from their homes and shelters, carrying sticks and hammers and clubs, and they start to run at Daenerys.

Daenerys looks at them fiercely, ready to die if that's how it's going to go. But before they can get anywhere near close enough to hit her, Drogon returns—still flickering and simmering in a few spots, but mostly free of wildfire—and burns the mob to cinders.

Daenerys climbs back on Drogon’s back and they start flying back up.

Cersei and Qyburn are celebrating with wine. Cersei has her back to the balcony as Drogon rises up into view, but Qyburn’s terrified look suggests that, perhaps, she should turn around. She does so just as Daenerys looks her way and the two queens lock eyes. Cersei drops her glass of wine. 

The Mountain grabs Cersei and all three run out and slam the door as Drogon rears back to get a good angle for fire-breathing and incinerates the room. 

As Drogon destroys the towers of the Red Keep, the bells start ringing. Daenerys turns her head and directs Drogon to the biggest bell tower. They circle it once, twice, three times—then Drogon destroys it.

Then Daenerys and Drogon start burning the whole city.

Arya and the Hound are in the Red Keep. They stop at the bottom of a huge staircase. The Hound stops Arya and tells her to leave.

HOUND: Do you want to end up like me?

ARYA: There are worse things to become.

The Hound gives her his grimmest scowl.

HOUND: No, there aren’t.

Arya nods towards the staircase behind him.

ARYA: There are.

The Hound turns around. On the staircase stands the Mountain, with Cersei and Qyburn behind him. 

Arya darts forward. 

HOUND: Leave him to me!

ARYA: He’s yours.

Needle drawn, she leaps towards Cersei, but the Mountain catches her leg as she passes in midair.

Arya whirls in his grip and thrusts Needle into one of his oozing red eyes. It punctures his helmet as it comes out the back of his head and gets stuck. Arya tries to pull it back but can’t; in that moment, the Mountain swings her and throws her against the wall. She twists enough to keep her head from hitting the wall, but it’s a hard blow and she crumples against the floor, stunned and gasping.

The Hound and the Mountain face off. 

CERSEI: Stay with me.

The Mountain turns, gives her a baleful red-eyed glare—well, one red eye; he doesn’t bother to remove Needle—and turns back to the Hound.

CERSEI: Stay—Qyburn, tell him—

She turns to where Qyburn was, but he’s slipped away, because he’s not an idiot.

As the Hound and Mountain face off, Cersei tiptoes past. 

Arya reaches for her groggily, but Cersei kicks her hand away and runs down a hallway.

The Hound and the Mountain have a brutal fight, pretty much as it was, with the Hound getting the worst of it. Needle stays stuck through the Mountain’s head throughout. The Hound knocks the Mountain’s helmet off, but it still hangs on at the back of his head because of Needle. Finally the Mountain pauses to get rid of it; the Hound, with the last of his strength, uses a dagger to cut the Mountain’s throat. It’s a deep cut and black blood oozes forth; the Mountain puts his hand to his throat, but it’s not a desperate gesture, it’s a moment of evaluation: _Can I keep going? Yes, I can._

Now he pulls Needle out of his eye-socket and sticks it sideways through the Hound’s neck. The Hound goes down—he’s still conscious, but he can’t get up. Blood is seeping out around Needle from both sides of his neck. 

The Mountain looms over him. The Hound grabs a piece of wood that’s on fire and holds it, weak and trembling, in front of himself. The Mountain, grinning, leans forward into the flame. His head catches fire. Still smiling, he grabs the Hound by the front of his shirt and pulls the Hound’s face close to his own burning head. The Hound closes his eyes and cringes.

At which point the Mountain’s head suddenly falls, tumbling, down the stairs, burning all the way. The Mountain’s grip gives way; the Hound falls back onto the staircase; the Mountain’s body falls next to him.

Above them stands Brienne, her sword dripping with the Mountain’s black blood.

BRIENNE: Where is she?

The Hound opens his mouth, but he can’t speak; there’s still Needle through his neck.

BRIENNE: Cersei. Where did she go?

Arya, still unable to get up, points the way Cersei fled. 

ARYA: That way.

Brienne sees Arya for the first time.

BRIENNE: My lady.

She tries to help Arya up, but Arya gestures again.

ARYA: Go.

Brienne hesitates, then heads down the stairs in the direction Arya pointed.

Arya crawls across the stairs to the Hound, who gives her a look that says: _Kill me._

Arya draws Needle out of his neck. Another gush of blood spills out and the life goes out of the Hound’s eyes. Arya puts her hand on his face and closes his eyelids. Unsteadily she rises to her feet and staggers down the stairs. She glances down the hall that Cersei and Brienne went down; she glances back at the Hound’s body; she turns the other way and stumbles towards the street.

The sequence of Arya running around the streets, trying to save a few people while the city burns around them, remains as is, terrifying and haunting.

Meanwhile, Jaime finds Cersei. Their reunion remains as it is, somehow both operatic and sad, up to the point where Jaime is climbing on rubble, trying to find an exit, while Cersei stands still in despair.

Jaime hears Cersei cry out behind him. He turns and sees that a sword is sticking out from her belly. The sword is withdrawn; Cersei, still alive but mortally wounded, collapses; behind her stands Brienne, bloody sword in hand. Jaime is aghast.

BRIENNE: They can call me Queen-killer now. I’ve also done terrible things and I’ll do more if I have to. Come with me.

Jaime doesn’t seem to see or hear her. He runs to Cersei and kneels to comfort her, but Brienne grabs his arm.

BRIENNE: Everything is burning. Come with me.

Jaime doesn’t even know she’s there. He pulls free and bends over Cersei.

JAIME: Look at me. Nothing else matters.

Brienne sees that the roof is falling in down one long hallway.

BRIENNE: Jaime. Come with me.

JAIME: Only us. 

BRIENNE: Come with me!

Brienne runs as the roof starts coming down. She reaches a stable arch and turns back just in time to see Jaime and Cersei buried in bricks and stones. Brienne wails in rage. [13]

Arya wakes up, covered in ash, streaks of blood across her face, ears ringing. She stumbles out into the body- and rubble-strewn street, where she finds a white horse smeared with blood. She walks up to it, calms it, and mounts it. 

She looks around at the bodies and rubble. She draws her sword, Needle, and she tosses it away. She rides the horse down the street and out of the city.

**Season 8, Episode 6: The Iron Throne**

Arya is not there, because if Arya didn’t ride that bloody white horse out of King’s Landing and away from all of this, then she didn’t really make a decision to build her life around something other than killing people. She doesn’t do anything this episode, there’s no reason for her to stick around other than “Aw, I want to see all the Stark kids together,” which exactly the kind of cheaply heroic ending that _Game of Thrones_ built its reputation on avoiding. So: Arya is gone.

Tyrion, Jon Snow, and Ser Davos stumble through the devastated, ash-covered city.

Tyrion and Jon come to the assembled Unsullied and Dothraki. As Drogon flies in like a presidential helicopter, they walk up the stairs. Daenerys enters with dragon wings spread behind her, which is a little over the top but undeniably cool. Jon and Tyrion take their places as Daenerys gives her rousing speech to her loyal army and appoints Grey Worm the Master of War.

As Dothraki whoop and Unsullied stamp their spears, Daenerys turns to Tyrion.

DAENERYS: What is it called? Greenfire?

TYRION: Wildfire.

DAENERYS: I’m told you once used it to defend the city.

TYRION: I did.

DAENERYS: Yet you did not warn me about it.

TYRION: I was…I was trying to save the city. I forgot. [14]

DAENERYS: I don’t believe you.

TYRION: I thought we’d used all of it.

DAENERYS: I’m told the Queen used wildfire to destroy the Great Sept.

TYRION: Yes.

DAENERYS: So you couldn’t have used all of it.

TYRION: I was trying to save innocent—

DAENERYS: If you had warned me about wildfire, you might have saved those innocent lives.

TYRION: (_with a grim chuckle_) I don’t believe you.

DAENERYS: Did Lord Varys also forget?

TYRION: No…I don’t think he did. I think he chose not to tell you.

DAENERYS: You failed me.

TYRION: Yes. And you burned a city.

Tyrion removes his Hand of the Queen badge and throws it down the stairs.

Daenerys looks back at Grey Worm. He raises his spear and throws it at Tyrion. It runs him through. Tyrion collapses and dies. [15]

Daenerys turns and looks at Jon, who looks back, stunned. Daenerys walks away, flanked by her guards. Jon watches her go. 

Jon finds Ser Davos. They talk for a moment, largely avoiding the topic of Daenerys—Jon avoiding it because every noble but stupid fiber of his being is telling him what he should do, Ser Davos avoiding it because he’s survived all this time by knowing when to keep his mouth shut and when to stay out of the way. But as they talk, Ser Davos pulls from his pocket the charred toy stag that he gave to Stannis Baratheon’s daughter, that he retrieved from the ashes of her pyre after Stannis sacrificed her to the Lord of Light, and he rubs it idly, not even aware that he’s doing it, and it reminds Jon of the toy horse he’d just seen in the incinerated hands of a child on the streets of King’s Landing.

Ser Davos goes off to try to be useful, because that’s how he copes with unspeakable horror, and Jon goes to the shattered remains of the Red Keep.

Daenerys is in the throne room. Drogon is curled up to the side—because Daenerys has just burned down a city and thousands of people want her dead who have nothing to lose and the throne room is cracked wide open and there’s no way that she would go anywhere alone ever again.

Daenerys has just fulfilled her childhood dream of sitting on the Iron Throne when Jon enters. Drogon opens an eye and fastens on him, but Jon bursts into a plea about dead women and children.

DAENERYS: Jon—

JON: —murdered innocent women and children—

DAENERYS: Jon—

JON: —Babies! Little babies!—

DAENERYS: Shut. Up.

Drogon rumbles. Jon shuts up.

DAENERYS: Noble men always think doing the right thing will end up right in the end. But what became of that noble man, Ned Stark? 

JON: They cut off his head.

DAENERYS: And he cut off the heads of other men before then, did he not? 

JON: He did.

DAENERYS: But for all the right reasons, he thought. You told me he cut off the head of a man who said he’d seen the White Walkers, but Ned Stark didn’t believe him. [16] Do you believe that man now?

JON: I do.

DAENERYS: All those heads. Some put on spikes, some left on the ground. Some wrapped up in boxes. Did they care whether the sword that cut their necks was just or not?

JON: I don’t know.

DAENERYS: They cared about nothing, because they were dead. When the Night King raised all of our fallen soldiers—the Unsullied and the Dothraki, the Northmen and the Black Watch—they didn’t care that they’d been fighting on the other side just moments before. Because they were dead. 

JON: I was dead.

DAENERYS: And what did you care about when you were dead, Jon?

Pause.

JON: Nothing.

Daenerys tells Jon they will build a better world together. Jon walks towards the throne. Drogon doesn’t like this and circles around Jon, but Daenerys—finally making a fatal mistake by listening to her heart instead of her dragon—hopes that Jon finally understands. She stands. Jon kneels in front of her. Drogon is still suspicious and eyes Jon warily from behind. She draws Jon up and kisses him.

And he stabs her.

For a moment, Daenerys gapes at him, she can't believe he's done this. Drogon can’t see what’s happened but he knows something bad just happened and hisses. Looking over Jon’s shoulder, Daenerys says:

DAENERYS: Dracarys.

Drogon unleashes a blast of fire and incinerates Jon. [17] Daenerys is caught in the blast, but she’s the Unburnt. The edges of her outfit burn, but Jon is in front of her so it mostly stays intact. And behind her the Iron Throne softens and wilts...but doesn’t completely melt.

Drogon stops. Daenerys steps forward, the charred bones and ashes of Jon Snow tumbling to the floor in front of her, a dagger sticking out of her chest. She falls. 

Drogon sniffs at her and nudges her with his snout. She reaches up and places her palm on him one last time before her arm falls lifeless. 

Drogon scoops up her body and sets off into the sky, knocking the Iron Throne over with his tail as he does so, and flies east.

Outside, Grey Worm sees Drogon fly off. He runs up to the throne room, where he finds only Jon Snow’s remains. He pokes at them with his spear and finds the carved wolf head that was the pommel of Jon’s sword.

An Unsullied soldier rushes in to inform him: The Northern army is at the gates. Grey Worm marshals the Unsullied and the Dothraki and goes to meet Sansa.

Cut to the two armies facing each other in front of the ruined gates of King's Landing.

GREY WORM: Sansa Stark. We were allies against the Night King. Have you come to attack us now?

SANSA: (_surprised_) Attack you? No. We were—and still are—allies. Where is Cersei Lannister?

GREY WORM: We think she is dead.

SANSA: Who killed her?

GREY WORM: We don’t know.

SANSA: Where is Daenerys Targaryan?

GREY WORM: (_his throat tightens_) We think she is dead.

SANSA: Who killed her?

GREY WORM: We don’t know.

SANSA: Where is Jon Snow?

GREY WORM: Jon Snow is dead.

SANSA: Who killed him?

Beat.

GREY WORM: We don’t know.

SANSA: Is anyone still alive? Where is Tyrion Lannister?

GREY WORM: Tyrion Lannister is dead.

SANSA: (_wearily, expecting the same response_) And who killed him?

GREY WORM: I did.

Sansa is surprised.

GREY WORM: The Queen commanded it.

SANSA: Did he deserve it?

GREY WORM: The Queen commanded it.

SANSA: Anyone else? Jaime Lannister? Cersei’s Hand—what was—

PODRICK: Qyburn.

SANSA: Him? Or that cackling idiot—

PODRICK: Euron Greyjoy.

SANSA: (_under her breath_) I hope he isn’t still alive.

GREY WORM: We think they are all dead.

SANSA: I heard one dragon was killed. Where is the other?

GREY WORM: It flew away.

SANSA: (_baffled_) Who rules over King’s Landing?

GREY WORM: Our Queen appointed me Master of War.

SANSA: And then she died.

Grey Worm glances down in grief, then back up at Sansa. Sansa looks over the Unsullied and the Dothraki.

SANSA: You look cold.

GREY WORM: Westeros is cold.

SANSA: Our people haven’t been friendly to you.

GREY WORM: They have not.

SANSA: I’m sorry for that. You deserve better. Without the Dothraki and the Unsullied, the Night King would rule over the Seven Kingdoms. I only know you as Grey Worm. Do you have another name?

GREY WORM: Torgo Nudho.

SANSA: Torgo Nudho. Leader of the Unsullied and the Dothraki, loyal servant of the Mother of Dragons and the Breaker of Chains. You have achieved great victories…and you have suffered great losses. I ask you: Do you want to rule the Seven Kingdoms?

Pause.

GREY WORM: No.

Thus Sansa Stark becomes Queen.

You can understand why George RR Martin wants Bran to be king in the end: He started with Bran. Bran being pushed out a window launches everything that follows. Writers are drawn to these nice formal symmetries. And Bran is a socially awkward brainy white guy who knows everything there is to know about the world of _Game of Thrones_—so basically a proxy for Martin himself. (Everyone tends to believe that the world should be run by people more like themselves.) Clearly Martin conceived this when he first started writing _A Song of Ice and Fire_. But since then, the story has grown organically, following all these vivid characters down their own individual paths, and now those neat formal symmetries not only don’t make sense, not only don’t fit with who these characters have become, those symmetries feel pat, kind of tinny and tidy and thin, at odds with the unruly, robust, compelling chaos he’s created since. I suspect part of him knows this, and this is why he’s having trouble finishing the books. His characters talk about breaking the wheel, but he hasn’t yet broken the wheel inside his own head. [18]

Cut to: Sansa walking through the damaged halls of the Red Keep. All around, soldiers and civilians are laboring to clean and repair the destruction. Sansa is followed by Podrick and a couple of other soldiers, flanked by Ser Davos and Samwell Tarly.

SER DAVOS: We can’t simply—the people won’t—

SANSA: The people want to get back to their lives.

SER DAVOS: These men slaughtered soldiers and civilians alike—

Sansa raises her hand to stop him.

SANSA: Ser Davos. I have two choices: Attempt to hold an army—

SAMWELL: —a large and very disciplined army—

SANSA: —to hold that army accountable for the orders of their queen, which would start another war, or: Absolve them and return them peacefully to their homes. Which would you have me choose?

Ser Davos struggles to find an argument.

SANSA: And—if you’ve forgotten—if they’re accountable for their Queen’s acts, so are you.

SER DAVOS: We are very short of ships, your grace.

SANSA: (_to Samwell_) Have the Iron Islands bent the knee?

SAMWELL: (_fumbling with raven scrolls_) Queen Yara has sworn allegiance, as have the Tullys, the Eyrie, Dorne—

SANSA: Borrow what ships we can from the Iron Fleet, build what more ships we need.

SER DAVOS: Building ships takes money.

SANSA: Borrow from the Iron Bank.

SER DAVOS: The crown already owes the Iron Bank—

Sansa stops and turns to Ser Davos firmly.

SANSA: And if the Iron Bank wants that debt repaid, they need to ensure there’s a crown to repay it.

Ser Davos nods and exits. Sansa glances at Samwell and starts walking again.

SANSA: A wooden throne?

SAMWELL: Made with wood from each—

Brienne of Tarth stands in front of Sansa and kneels before her. Sansa stops.

SANSA: You left me.

BRIENNE: It will not happen again.

SANSA: You broke your vow.

BRIENNE: I was wrong to do so.

SANSA: Yes. You were.

Sansa considers Brienne’s bowed head.

SANSA: Ser Podrick.

PODRICK: Uh, I’m not, uh—

SANSA: We’ll have your ceremony after we have my ceremony—there will be a lot of ceremonies—Ser Podrick, I appoint you Lord Commander of the Queensguard.

PODRICK: Yes, your grace.

SANSA: The Queensguard is in shreds. I task you with reviving it. Your first new recruit into the Queensguard is Ser Brienne of Tarth. She will begin at the lowest rank. Do you accept this commission, Ser Brienne?

Brienne rises.

BRIENNE: I do, your grace.

SANSA: You may go. 

Brienne and Pod leave. Sansa prompts Samwell.

SANSA: Wood from each…

SAMWELL: From each of the Seven Kingdoms—

They enter the Throne Room, which is still open to the air. The half-melted Iron Throne lies on its side at one end of the room. Various people are waiting to talk to the new Queen.

Gendry, the former King Robert Baratheon’s bastard son, and some soldiers are drinking in one corner of the room. They bow as Sansa passes.

SANSA: (_a formal acknowledgement_) Lord Baratheon.

SAMWELL: —symbolically representing the unity—

On the floor in the middle of the room lie a series of bodies, with eye stones over their eyes. 

First they walk past the brutally battered bodies of Jaime and Cersei, followed by the body of Tyrion. Sansa is clearly only barely listening to Samwell as she looks down at Tyrion. Samwell sees this and trails off.

SAMWELL: —of Westeros under the new Queen…

SANSA: The last of the Lannisters. (_beat_) They are the last, aren’t they?

SAMWELL: Some cousins.

SANSA: (_frowning_ Hmm.

They come to a large wooden box. Sansa lifts the lid, peers inside, then turns away.

SANSA: Are we sure that’s Jon?

SAMWELL: There was this, amid the bones and ashes.

He holds out the carved wolf head that was the pommel of Jon’s sword. Sansa takes it, considers it for a moment, then hands it back to Samwell.

SANSA: Bury him in the North.

SAMWELL: Beyond the Wall?

SANSA: Yes.

She looks down at the body of the Hound. 

SANSA: No sign of Arya?

SAMWELL: No, your grace. Not yet.

Sansa looks at the Iron Throne. Three soldiers are, with effort, setting it back upright.

SANSA: What should I use until this Wooden Throne is built?

SAMWELL: Perhaps a simple chair? To symbolize—

SANSA: Yes, fine, get me a chair.

Samwell scampers off. Bronn, who has been waiting patiently, steps towards Sansa; guards put their hands on their swords. Bronn stops and bows.

BRONN: Ser Bronn, your grace.

SANSA: You worked for the Lannisters.

BRONN: I worked for who paid me. For a time, the Lannisters paid me.

SANSA: Paid you to do what?

BRONN: Mostly, keep them alive.

Sansa gestures to the dead bodies. Bronn shrugs.

BRONN: They stopped paying me. But Tyrion and Ser Jaime promised me that I would be lord of Highgarden, your grace.

SANSA: Why?

BRONN: Highgarden? It’s nice, I thought—

SANSA: (_cutting him off_) Why did they make this promise?

BRONN: To be honest…so that I wouldn’t kill them.

Sansa, tired, sits down on the lumpen, half-melted Iron Throne.

SANSA: You expect the crown to honor an act of extortion?

BRONN: Well—

Qyburn interrupts and throws himself in front of Sansa.

QYBURN: Your grace! I beg your mercy!

SANSA: You are—?

QYBURN: Don’t you remember me, your grace?

SANSA: I do not.

QYBURN: I’m Qyburn, your grace.

BRONN: _He_ worked for Cersei.

QYBURN: I served the crown! And could continue to do so. I have many skills, your grace, I am a healer—

Sansa holds up her hand to stop him.

SANSA: We will be in need of healers. But you look hungry. Go to the kitchens. We will discuss your service later.

QYBURN: Bless you, your grace.

Qyburn smugly exits. Sansa watches him go.

SANSA: (_quietly_) You want Highgarden, Ser Bronn?

BRONN: Yes.

SANSA: Kill that man for me.

BRONN: Easy. Should it look like an accident?

SANSA: It doesn’t matter. No one will miss him. 

There is a burst of laughter from the corner of the room where soldiers are patting Gendry on the back. The laughter draws Sansa’s attention.

Bronn looks at Gendry, then back at Sansa. Sansa looks at Bronn, but doesn’t say anything. Bronn guesses what she’s thinking.

BRONN: Accident?

Sansa hesitates, wrestling with conflicting impulses. 

Now the camera reveals Bran standing nearby, observing the throne room in his astral form as the Three Eyed Raven. He hears the distant sound of a dragon’s cry and looks up.

Now he stands on a balcony in Mereen, beside Daario Naharis, Daenerys’ former lover, whom she left to rule Mereen in her absence. Daario stares up at the dragon flying far overhead. He doesn’t know what happened, but he imagines the worst. He begins to weep.

We hear hoofbeats. Bran turns his head to the left. He’s now in a forest and Arya Stark ride past on a white horse stained with dried blood. Arya comes up on a ridge and looks down below, where lies a small port, and in that port is a ship. Bran watches as she and her horse go down a narrow, crooked path to the port.

A crackling sound. Bran turns his head to the right and now stands in the clearing outside the former Three-Eyed Raven’s godswood, far beyond the wall. Three former White Walkers stagger in, stiff and frostbitten. One of them falls and grips a root of the tree. A leaf sprouts from the back of his hand.

Bran turns his head to the left again. He now stands outside the mouth of an enormous cave. In the distance is a speck in the sky that quickly turns into Drogon, who lands awkwardly, still with Daenerys in his grip. Drogon goes into the cave, which is filled with bones, including a pile of human bones and skulls. Drogon lays Daenerys atop this pile.

Drogon shudders and squirms. Drogon lays an egg. [19]

Delicately, Drogon picks up the egg in her mouth and sets it atop Daenerys’ body.

Drogon sets Daenerys aflame. Daenerys, the Unburnt and Mother of Dragons, burns for the first time.

And the egg glows from within.

**FOOTNOTES**

1—In the books: Galadriel, Eowyn, and Goldberry, the wife of Tom Bombadil. In the movies: Galadriel, Eowyn, and Arwen, the elf who’s in love with Aragorn, whom the filmmakers had to make up because there weren’t enough women in the story.

2—Season 7, episode 4, Bronn wields the scorpion.

3—Season 6, episodes 3 and 10.

4—Okay, this is one of the two things I don’t have any canonical support for, so this is where we turn into fan-fiction. I’m imagining that when Tyrion was King Joffrey’s Hand, he had Ned Stark’s head and body recovered and sent to Robb Stark in an attempt to cool tensions. It seems like something Tyrion would do. Robb sent them on to Winterfell, and Maester Luwin had him interred. If you add that into Season 2, this zombie Ned Stark moment would be really cool.

5—Season 4, episode 4

6—The whole mothership-ness of the Night King’s defeat (that this unstoppable army of the dead that’s been built up for 7 seasons [I mean, the very first scene in the entire series was of a White Walker slaughtering men of the Night’s Watch] can be defeated by a single blow because of a very specific vulnerability to Valyrian steel) is a problem. There’s really no way to make that feel satisfying enough to justify all that build-up. But I get why it needs to happen; the Night King has no personality, and ultimately this show is deeply character-driven, so having the final face-off be with an unstoppable cipher is unsatisfying in an entirely different way. So he needs to be gotten rid of, and it can’t take too long because that will wreck the momentum of the ending. So yes, it’s a problem, but one that’s pretty unsolvable, so I’m not going to fight it.

7—Isn’t it a little weird that, in the aftermath of this momentous battle, that no one congratulates Arya for having killed the Night King? I mean, we’ve been facing this existential threat to all humanity for eight seasons, and Arya saved the world, and no one mentions it. You could argue that no one but Bran saw it happen—but doesn’t anyone even ask about it?

8—Season 6, Episode 7

9—The parley outside the gates of King’s Landing in this episode makes no sense at all. Daenerys and Cersei don’t trust each other, nor should they. Cersei has just killed one of Dany’s dragons, whom she loves as her own children. That Daenerys would meet without having Drogon lying in wait makes no sense. That Daenerys would just walk away after Cersei beheads Dany’s most intimate friend makes no sense. That Cersei would be there, exposed to a potential dragon attack, when she knows she’s provoking Daenerys to make her assault immediately, makes no sense. A clandestine meeting between a few representatives might happen, but not this.

10—So many, many episodes. Usually with her dragons, but in Season 6, Episode 4, she pushes over a brazier, burns the Khals in their tent, and emerges unburnt. Most of the people she’s burned are people we think of as bad, which is why Daenerys is so beloved; her brutality feels righteous. But she also burned Randyll and Dickon Tarly, whose only sin was being allied with her enemies.

11—Season 4, Episode 4

12—Season 2, Episode 10

13—Let’s talk, for a moment, about character development. Real people grow and change in some ways, while remaining constant in others. Sometimes they change because they’re bored or unhappy with their lives, but that’s not typical; most people only change when the circumstances of their lives demand that they do so. Many popular fictional characters never change, because they’ve been conceived as ideal avatars for the audience’s fantasies—Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Superman, and many other such male Mary Sues are good examples, as are Aragorn and Frodo Baggins in Lord of the Rings. By the end of the books and movies they’re a little burnished by the struggles they’ve gone through, but they’re still the same good, noble characters they were to begin with. Frodo had his moments of temptation, but he overcomes them precisely because his character is solid and immutable. The characters of Game of Thrones genuinely change, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Certain qualities may stick: For example, Jaime Lannister goes from being smug and self-absorbed to recognizing his limitations and developing compassion for others, but his love for his sister never stops being a driving force in his life. But that love is tested, and those moments when it wavers are among Jaime’s most compelling scenes. Brienne of Tarth has build her entire life around a personal code of honor, to which she holds fast throughout the show. By this eighth season, in order for her character to remain vital and engaging, she needs to face circumstances that will challenge that code, not from without—she’s already withstood such challenges—but from within. It makes sense that it’s romantic and sexual love that push her; these are emotions she’s never allowed herself to feel. But D&D decided that her response to losing the object of these new emotions, Jaime Lannister, was to collapse in a puddle of tears…something she’s never done before. While this also could be justified as character development, it’s a choice that both undermines her personal authority and takes her completely out of the action for the rest of the story. It is therefore a weak choice, one both unnecessary and uncompelling. I think it’s stronger, and certainly more active, for her to violate her personal code of honor as she fights to keep the person she loves.

14—I know, I know, I said characters forgetting important things is sloppy writing—and it is. But all but one person I’ve mentioned wildfire to had forgotten about it; I’ve read a dozen articles complaining about this or that and not one of them pointed out that, as the city burns, we see bursts of green flame from wildfire, why didn’t Cersei use it? And Tyrion was so obsessed with convincing Daenerys not to burn the city, and human beings can only hold so many things in their heads at one time…yes, it’s sloppy, and if I can come up with a better reason I’ll put it in—but for now, I’m going with it, because Cersei and Qyburn not using wildfire is more absurd.

15—Daenerys has already warned Tyrion that if he fails her again, she’ll kill him. She has an established take-no-prisoners policy. There is no justification for her not killing Tyrion. So Tyrion dies.

16—Season 1, Episode 1.

17—We know Jon is not immune to fire because in Season 1, Episode 8, he burns his hand when he throws a lantern at a wight to protect the Lord Commander. I’ve read that, in the books, Daenerys herself isn’t immune to fire, but only survived the pyre that birthed her dragons because of some one-time spell of protection—but the show clearly decided she is the magical Unburnt and I'm embracing that.

18—It makes no sense at all for Bran to become King of the Seven Kingdoms. Not only has he said he can’t be Lord of Winterfell because he’s the Three Eyed Raven—though one could argue that he only said that because he knows that his destiny is to become king…but whether he can see the future is very murky and inconsistent in the show—but more significantly, he’s repeatedly said that’s he’s no longer entirely human and that he mostly lives in the past. I don’t know about you, but human empathy and and investment in the here and now are pretty high on my list of qualities a king should have. Meanwhile, Sansa—in addition to being the only character with royal ambitions who plausibly survives—is the only prospective ruler who’s shown any interest in the day-to-day demands of actually ruling or in the welfare of the ruled. And that moment in the last episode? When Bran’s been appointed King of the Seven Kingdoms but Sansa insists that the North will be independent and Bran agrees? And no one points out how outrageously nepotistic this is or says, “Hey, wait a minute, if _that’s_ an option…”? That’s the silliest moment in the entire show. 

19—Okay, this is the other thing that I have no canonical justification for, that veers into pure fan-fiction. I just think it’s more enjoyable to end with the promise of dragons continuing to exist, and I’m amused that everyone assumes that the dragons are all male without any evidence (admittedly, Daenerys names them all after men: Khal Drogo, her brother Viserys, and her older brother—and father of Jon Snow—Rhaegar). I prefer to imagine that they’re hermaphroditic and can self-fertilize.


End file.
